


Set Every Crooked Line

by Rubynye



Category: Star Trek XI
Genre: F/M, Mirror Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-23
Updated: 2010-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-11 05:22:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Those who survived made by their actions their own tales.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Set Every Crooked Line

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Chasing Cars](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/1317) by The Southern Scribe. 



  
There was a story that made sense of the day's events, a tale of a desperate mission and stolen technology, of a world annihilated by a supernova because her rescue came too late. There was a reason the Romulan who called himself Nero threw himself despairingly into the black hole he'd created, only to emerge on the far side charred down to a nub of hatred for all things living and revulsion twice over for anything Terran. There was a logic to his vicious attack on the _Kelvin_, even if simply the nonsensical sense of vengeful, grieving madness. But George Kirk steered the burning _Kelvin_ down the maw of her killer and blew the _Narada_ into shreds from the inside out, and in the universe of the Terran Empire former Prelate Spock had more pressing tasks to complete than undertaking a unidirectional journey through a wormhole to provide answers to a changed past.

There was a larger story which enfolded the events of that day, a hidden web of causality linking its deaths and fires, but none of those caught in its events would ever know the reasons, and those who survived made by their actions their own tales.

\- o - + - o -

  
"Where's my husband?" Winona tries to snarl and can only sob, her voice imploding around the wracking pain of the contraction, panic threatening to choke her when Captain Robau's only answer is a too-smooth smile. "Where?" she gasps as she feels the shuttle rock around her, lights and metal giving way to a black expanse of space on one side and bursts of fire on the other, shadows and flame smeared by the tears washing over her vision. "Where's George?" she screams as the next contraction takes her, expelling the words with the same clenching force as she uses to bear down around the iron-hard lump of pain inside her.

Dimly, beyond her own pulse rushing in her ears, her own rasping breath, Winona hears the doctor and nurses twitter, Robau's resonant voice as he commands the pilot. The shuttle rocks again as debris thumps and pings against its outer hull and one thought beats against her skull like fists on a doorless wall, _where's George where's George where's George?_

Robau's hand lands on her shoulder, heavy and broad, a distracting anchor. "Don't worry, Lieutenant," he murmurs in her ear as she pants, restrained by her body's singleminded task from reaching to hurt him, Captain or no. "I assured my First Officer I'd watch over his wife."

Winona knows then where George is. She remembers the night they celebrated his promotion to XO, after they sent their chosen ensign limping away and it was just the two of them in their redolently damp bed, his cheerful sarcasm in her ear and his hand curled around her shoulder where Robau's is now. _You know how it is, of course,_ he'd said lightly, _the second in command goes down with the ship._ Her whole body tightens along one vector, pushing to expel the child within her, but she manages to twitch her shoulder in Robau's grip. Not enough to free herself, and he just tightens his fingers; she thinks of banging her head against his and can only listen to herself whimper as she never has in the Booth, can only suck bitter air through her teeth.

The cat-eyed doctor wavers, "Captain, Sir, we need for Lieutenant Kirk to push--"

"Go on and pop out that baby, Winona," Robau murmurs to her, smooth and low, and she growls her frustration that she can't unclench her hands from this sheet to dig her nails into his throat. "And while we wait," he adds more loudly as he steps back and lets her go, "let me congratulate you, Lieutenant Kirk, on your husband's promotion! Commander Kirk's the Captain now."

Robau's words burning through her, Winona curls in on herself with another scream, and wishes she could kill them all for thinking she would make such a noise because of mere labor.

\- o - + - o -

  
An endless hour later, Winona lies limply on the stretcher, swathed in white blankets along with the blue-eyed baby in her arms. Beyond the shuttle's window the shards of the alien ship glitter distantly as they tumble, the _Kelvin_ vanished into dust and smoke on the far side of the burning golden star. George is gone with their ship, and Winona stares at the emptiness where it used to be, where he used to be, the ghost of his parting kiss tingling on her forehead and their son asleep in the bend of her elbow.

The shuttle beeps and hums around her, the medical staff chattering softly as they continue to clean up, Robau in the cockpit giving the fleet of shuttles some trivial orders and making his prettiest excuses to whichever Imperial ship is on its way to retrieve the survivors. Winona's heart jerks painfully at each syllable in his deep voice, and as she lies there staring blankly out at space she motionlessly tenses each limb and sinew, finding herself heavy with exhaustion but sufficiently alive and with her body back under her command.

As George is neither. Winona remembers his laughing voice as he said, _Don't name the bump after my dad, that fuckstick. He's what happens when you hobble a defenseless kid with something shitty like Tiberius. Let's name him after your dad, Win, let's call him Jim._ She remembers his broad bright smile when her father first brought him to her and said, _Winnie, this is George, he's yours if you want him,_ and how that grin widened when she growled that she didn't need a bodyguard and knocked his long legs out from beneath him, how he looked up at her, fingers spread in the dust, and asked, _Miss Winona, may I get up?_ She thinks about when George kissed her naked thigh and buckled the sleek straps of a dagger holster around it, the one she's wearing beneath her Sickbay gown and all these soft blankets; she pictures the depthless blue of his eyes as she drew the knife and raised him from his knees with its flat beneath his chin, until she spun it in her hand and sheathed it, standing still to let him wrap her in his arms and lift her to his kiss.

Winona thinks about George, and her eyes burn like her heart. She'd thought sometimes that if she survived him she'd have to remind herself he was gone lest his indelible presence make her sanity waver, that she couldn't help but feel him soaked into her skin and her soul, but now all she feels is the ragged hole in the universe where he used to be, and the soft weight of their son.

And she feels Robau's footsteps vibrating up from the floor, waking her from her drifting reminisce. She could almost thank him for rousing her, and could almost howl with jagged laughter at that thought; instead Winona smooths her face, keeping her eyes mild as she looks up. "Sir," she says blandly, holding fast to the thought that he told her himself George was the Captain, however briefly for however doomed a ship.

"Lieutenant," he answers, looking pleased, and why shouldn't he? The mysterious enemy vessel has been successfully destroyed, he can blame his XO for losing the ISS _Kelvin_, he escaped without injury and with excuses likely to spare him from potential Imperial wrath. He's even thinking of turning the story of her son's battlefield birth into sentimental pap to entertain the Empress, Winona can see in his glittering eyes as he crouches beside her again, as he asks, "How is the newest Kirk?"

Winona doesn't growl. She doesn't scream. She has only one chance, but her father taught her alongside George that one chance is all a person needs in life. She keeps her shoulder relaxed and wilts just slightly towards Robau as she says, "He's a good baby, he has his father's eyes."

Jim chooses just that moment to yawn, and Winona spares a hope that he'll always be such a good boy for her. Robau bends his neck, looking down at her son, and Winona snaps her hand up along her thigh, draws her dagger and swings it up into his throat, shoving it through the wrist-jarring resistance of the carotid sheath.

Robau jerks his head up, but not before her dagger's in his artery. He grips her wrist, grinding the bones together, but she succeeds in turning her hand, sweeping open a wide arcing gap in the side of his throat. He draws his lips back in a snarl as he punches her in the eye, but it's just bright sparks of pain, nothing feels broken, and she jerks her head back to ride out the blow as he sinks down before he can manage to hit her again. Winona lets his own weight pull his flesh open around her knife, keeps her fingers closed on it no matter the crackling in her wrist under his grip, tucks Jim's face to her breast so he won't choke as Robau's blood splashes out in great gouts across her arm and chest and legs, spattering them both and soaking all the blankets.

Robau's glaring eyes glaze, and he doesn't choke out a single word as his fingers loosen just enough and Winona jerks her hand free, dagger still in her grasp, as he falls backwards to the floor beside her bed. There's a rustle and a gasp from one of the medical staff, and Winona levels her dagger hand at the source of the noise, keeping her eyes on Robau as he scrabbles both hands weakly against his throat, as he gurgles and goes limp in a spreading pool of his own blood. She watches him intently as he subsides and twitches, as his breath drags out harshly into a final rattle, until she's sure of him.

"Oh God," whimpers a nurse, and Winona looks up. The doctor totters forward as the nurse hides behind her, cat eyes wide and blinking fast just like a startled Terran's as the nurse continues to gasp, "oh God, oh God..."

"You killed the Captain!" says the doctor, and Winona's stillness explodes in a throat-rasping scream. The doctor staggers back a step, the pilot rushes into the back and collides with her as the nurses huddle, peering around the cover of her shaking body. Four sets of eyes stare at Winona, wide and glistening, and if she could she'd fling herself claw-fingered and shrieking at them all.

But her dagger hand wobbles in midair and the pilot's hand curls around his phaser; her baby son snuffles against her breast, and she loosens her arm just enough to let him breathe as Robau's blood congeals stickily between her tightly folded fingers. "No I did _not_ kill the _Captain_," Winona snarls as forcefully as she can, pushing out the words like she clenched on each contraction, tractoring four gazes with hers. "George Kirk was the Captain of the _Kelvin_ when she went down. I killed the man who left him to die!" Her voice flutters in her shredded throat like razored wings, and she drags in air and squeezes down on her breath, keeping it controlled. "I avenged my husband. Any of you got a problem with that?" The pilot's fingers slump off his phaser. One of the nurses shakes his head. "Then get this mess cleaned up. That's an order."

Winona lowers her dagger then, smudging it as clean as she can on the blanket. Her wrist twinges when she turns it, her eye aches and her body feels heavier than ever, but she can almost hear George murmuring in her ear, _Now's when you have to keep it together, Win._ She glares at the pilot until he returns to the cockpit, ostentatiously ignoring the nurses as they drag Robau's body away until they close the inner airlock door behind it. Then she gives them a mild look and a nod, and out it goes.

As the nurses remove the bloody blankets and swab the shuttle floor, the doctor helps Winona into a new gown, one sleeve at a time so she doesn't have to let go of Jim, and she shifts her knife between hands. The pilot babbles into the comm and she calls from the bottom of her lungs, "Patch Imperial Command through to me," letting her legs lie still, making her voice do the work.

The pilot does as she tells him, bringing her a portable comm just in time for her to hear the crackly, querulous demand, "Where's Robau? Who is this?"

"Lieutenant Winona Kirk of the ISS _Kelvin_," she says, pushing out each mouthful of syllables, keeping her eyes open though her surroundings swim around her. "My husband George --" and she aches all through, her voice breaking on his name, but she pushes down with her diaphragm and keeps going, word by word. "My husband was Brevet Captain Kirk of the _Kelvin_, and in his name I have relieved Robau of command."

The voice on the comm cackles, ancient and sharp. "So you have, girl? Boldly done, if you can hang onto it. The _Tiberius_ is on its way, eta 22 hours. Try to keep things together until they arrive."

Captain April's ship; he and George always liked each other well enough, always enjoyed their spars over April's ship's name. "Yes, ma'am," Winona answers, imagining wires hooked around her lashes to hoist her heavy eyelids, her shoulders sinking into the gurney's mattress for what thin rest she can have. She'll have to make this same speech to the shuttles, she can't dare sleep until she's aboard April's ship, and it's a gamble to trust this medical shuttle crew, but for the moment Winona lays down her comm, heavy in her still-sticky fingers. She hauls in a deeper breath, her head throbbing with her heartbeat, and to keep her eyes open she looks at her new son sleeping peacefully in the bend of her arm, with her dagger pressed flat against his swaddled side and red smears of blood in his baby-fine blond hair.


End file.
